White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is deeply involved in negotiating how much to redact from a classified US Senate probe into the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program, according to a new report.

McDonough is playing a top role in hashing out what will be
available to the public upon release of an abbreviated executive
summary for the 6,000-page report, Huffington Post reported citing sources close to the
negotiations.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s $40 million investigation
into the Central Intelligence Agency's Rendition, Detention, and
Interrogation Program - which was active from September 11, 2001
to 2006 - has found that the spy agency purposely deceived the
US Justice Department to attain legal justification for the use
of torture techniques, among other findings that resulted in the
report, completed from March 2009 to December 2012. Of that
investigative report, the public will only see a 500-page,
partially-redacted executive summary that is in the process of
declassification.

McDonough’s involvement may indicate how monumental the tug-of-war between the Senate committee and the CIA
has become during the investigation. The committee has alleged
that the CIA has spied on its staff, while the intelligence
agency has accused the committee of leaking classified
information amid its “inquisition” of the CIA, as one
intelligence source described the probe.

The White House did confirm that McDonough was involved in the
negotiations, but questions over the nature of his participation
were left unanswered.

“We’re not going to get into the details of our discussions,
but White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis
McDonough, are in regular touch with [Intelligence Committee]
leadership on a variety of matters, including to discuss the
committee’s review of the Bush Administration’s rendition,
detention and interrogation program, in an effort to help ensure
the executive summary is completed and declassified consistent
with national security interests,” Bernadette Meehan,
spokeswoman for the National Security Council, told Huffington
Post.

Sources also said that in addition to redaction edits, McDonough
has urged Senate members to avoid attacking CIA Director John
Brennan after the report’s executive summary is released.

"The Chief of Staff's agenda was about how we could work
together to meet the President’s desire to ensure the executive
summary is completed and declassified consistent with national
security interests, so that we can shed light on this program and
make sure it is never repeated. These were not discussions about
Director Brennan," Meehan said.

While specific details of the Senate committee’s report are still
unknown, McClatchy news service reported
in April that it outlines 20 main conclusions about the
post-9/11 torture program which, according to the investigation,
intentionally evaded White House, congressional, and intra-agency
oversight.

“The report does not put responsibility with the [George W.
Bush] White House,” a source familiar with the report told
McClatchy last
week, echoing previous concerns that Bush administration
officials will likely avoid any accountability for the the
shadowy capture-and-detain regime at Guantanamo Bay and secret
"black site" prisons, often fueled by
suspect bounties, or for crafting the legal framework that
allowed the CIA to interrogate detainees with waterboarding and
other methods deemed to be torturous by international standards.

The Senate report “does not look at the Bush administration’s
lawyers to see if they were trying to literally do an end run
around justice and the law,” another McClatchy source said
last week.

As RT previously reported, former CIA director Leon Panetta
has alleged in his new memoir that a former Obama White House
chief of staff, current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, was livid
with Panetta upon learning of the latter's cooperation with the
Senate probe.

“I was summoned down to a meeting in the Situation Room,
where I was told I would have to ‘explain’ this deal to Rahm… It
did not take long to get ugly,” Panetta wrote in 'Worthy
Fights: A Memoir of Leaders in War and Peace.'

“’The president wants to know who the f**k authorized this
release to the committees,’” Rahm said, slamming his hand down on
the table. ‘I have a president with his hair on fire, and I want
to know what the f**k you did to f**k this up so bad!’”